Wednesday, June 6, 2012

There is never a dull moment in Spain.  It is fascinating reading the newspapers because El País is the more liberal of the Spanish newspapers and El Mundo tends to be the more conservative.  That means that sometimes they lead with the same stories and sometimes they report or fail to report significant happenings in the political sphere. Take the case of Carlos Dívar, the President of the General Council of Judicial Power and Supreme Tribunal.  It seems that he has been traveling to Marbella and Puerto Banus and staying at the most elegant hotels and dining at the most exclusive restaurants and staying for four or five days while attending to the people’s business.  It seems that is many instances either there was no business to attend to or that business lasted for all of an hour.  Most of the cost of these forays to Andalusia was at public expense.  Interestingly enough whenever he did travel he did so in the company of his bodyguards of which he has twenty-one.  It appears that there are three different shifts comprised of seven men each.

Dívar has appeared before the press to declare that he has done nothing untoward and that all his travel was related to the position he holds.  He would not and did not entertain any questions at his appearance in front of the media.  The socialists want to call him before a congressional committee to explain his actions, but the Partido Popular has blocked that request.  The blocking effort is a familiar PP tactic and they have used it to prevent regional officials from appearing before a governing body, in spite of the fact that they have been accused of malfeasance, accepting bribes and using public funds for private purposes.  The PP has also not permitted the banker most responsible for the present bank crisis here to appear before a committee to answer questions.  Of course, the constant refrain from the PP, is that all these problems are the direct result of the socialists having been in power for the previous eight years.  This coming from the current Prime Minister who criticized every action of the previous PM.

On a more mundane level, Monday was a rather ordinary day.  Susan had her morning Pilates class while I read, wrote and worked on my magic.  We went to El Cuento for lunch where we both started with a salad and Susan had a brochette for her main course and I had an arroz mariner.  We had fresh fruit for dessert and, of course, we finished our meal with a cup of coffee.  Later that evening I made my way to the CIVAC meeting for a meeting devoted to self-working effects.

I had suggested the topic and I was pleased to see that ten people had something to present.  The choices were very interesting and very instructive.  It was fun to see the variety of ways in which we present effects. After the meeting we ended up at The London Café for something to eat.  That proved to be a mistake.  They still don’t seem to understand that when there is a large party seated at a table they need to figure out a way for all the orders to be delivered at the same time.  It seemed like we were eating on Noah’s Ark because the sandwiches came out two by two.  I was the last to be served and that was a good twenty minutes after Pepe and Jaime had received the first two sandwiches.

The conversation around the table was rather animated as we talked about the essence and essential of clowning and then entered into the inevitable discussion of whether a magician is actor playing the role of a magician.  This is a statement that was first pronounced by the French magician, Robert Houdin in the 1800’s.  As far as I am concerned the reality is that a good magician makes use of all the same resources that an actor does paying attention to lighting, sound, entrances and exits, diction and delivery.  I should hasten to say that a good magician does that.

Yesterday we had lunch at Rojas Clemente because Susan was hankering for gazpacho and when she passed by the restaurant on the way back from having her nails done, she noticed that it was on the menu.  We both had the gazpacho and I ordered the filet and Susan the meatballs.  We each had half of each dish.  I had coffee for dessert and Susan had a café granizado topped with leche merengada.

I had to run a few errands, but I got back in time for a 7:00 PM meet-up with a real estate agent who was going to show us an apartment.  We ended up seeing three different one and each was more disappointing than the other.  They all were dark and most probably had had nothing done in the last ten years to spruce them up. We are looking at another apartment this evening and yet another on Thursday.  Our house in Alhambra has been listed and the first Open House took place last Sunday.  Twelve families toured through the house and there is a second Open House scheduled for this coming Sunday.  By the time we got back home it was a little after 8:00 and we stayed in for the rest of the evening.